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I got my first computer around the time that happened, a humble Pentium 1. It was only much, much later that I learned about Linux, then FreeBSD and the whole

I got my first computer around the time that happened, a humble Pentium 1. It was only much, much later that I learned about Linux, then FreeBSD and the whole history behind UNIX, RISC machines and all that - at a point when it was mostly history. I even acquired some machines out of pure fascination. I got an IBM RS/6000, a Sun Ultra45 and a Blade 100. Still gotta get a MIPS and, especially, an Alpha machine. These machines seemed so much more serious compared to PCs, I was blown away when I discovered there had been 64 bit architectures in the mid-90s! To this day, PCs seem like toys to me with their gimmick-y firmware. It always left me wondering about what could have been. And Alpha may have been the most promising back in the day!

spijdar 6y ago
What's more, there were 64 bit laptops in the mid 90s. Not particularly mobile ones, but if you could tolerate a 7 pound behemoth, you could get a 200 MHz 64 bit SPARC processor with 512MB of RAM in '96/97. The AlphaBook with an Alpha processor that was announced in '95 comes even earlier. https://www.vaxbarn.com/index.php/other-bits/555-tadpole-alphabook1 https://www.vaxbarn.com/index.php/other-bits/555-tadpole-alp... One thing that always strikes me about workstations and (especially?) these laptops is that, while the CPUs themselves weren't always much faster than competing Intel ones, they always seemed to have much better I/O options. The SCSI drives and controllers seemed to get much better throughput with lower CPU utilization, which pays dividends to how the overall system performs. A well designed workstation is more than just the sum of its parts. While these workstations/servers were arguably overpriced and it's not surprising they failed to the cheaper Wintel machines, they just seemed more well rounded...
- nineteen999 6y ago
  > The SCSI drives and controllers seemed to get much better throughput with lower CPU utilization, which pays dividends to how the overall system performs. Indeed - my employer at the time acquired 10 AlphaPC 164SX motherboards with 21164PC CPU's and after adding a nice amount of RAM and a nice fast Ultra2 SCSI drive they felt really fast. I remember running the early GNOME 1.0 desktop on it and it was just so responsive.

spijdar 6y ago

What's more, there were 64 bit laptops in the mid 90s. Not particularly mobile ones, but if you could tolerate a 7 pound behemoth, you could get a 200 MHz 64 bit SPARC processor with 512MB of RAM in '96/97. The AlphaBook with an Alpha processor that was announced in '95 comes even earlier. https://www.vaxbarn.com/index.php/other-bits/555-tadpole-alphabook1 https://www.vaxbarn.com/index.php/other-bits/555-tadpole-alp... One thing that always strikes me about workstations and (especially?) these laptops is that, while the CPUs themselves weren't always much faster than competing Intel ones, they always seemed to have much better I/O options. The SCSI drives and controllers seemed to get much better throughput with lower CPU utilization, which pays dividends to how the overall system performs. A well designed workstation is more than just the sum of its parts. While these workstations/servers were arguably overpriced and it's not surprising they failed to the cheaper Wintel machines, they just seemed more well rounded...

nineteen999 6y ago
> The SCSI drives and controllers seemed to get much better throughput with lower CPU utilization, which pays dividends to how the overall system performs. Indeed - my employer at the time acquired 10 AlphaPC 164SX motherboards with 21164PC CPU's and after adding a nice amount of RAM and a nice fast Ultra2 SCSI drive they felt really fast. I remember running the early GNOME 1.0 desktop on it and it was just so responsive.